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Tag Archives: winter

Yesterday I was reading about setting goals, and it hit me. I haven’t made any goals of what I’d like to achieve by adding exercise into my life. I’m wishy-washy. No wonder I excel at making excuses and procrastination.

Why do I want to exercise? What am I hoping to achieve? Gain strength? Improve flexibility? Lose weight? Fit into the 100+ dresses in my closet? Yes, I know that’s a crazy amount of dresses. It made life easy when I worked in an office, grab a dress, sweater, shoes and go!

I want to achieve all of the above. I’m tired of being squishy and not fitting into many of my clothes. The option does exist to buy new clothes. However, buying new clothes isn’t the answer.

My goal is to be down 10 lbs, strong and fit in 8 weeks. December 9!

I’ve been hard on myself about exercise lately. Yet when I write down what I’ve done each week, I’m doing something each day. I’m just not pushing my limits. Recognizing that I hold myself back is helpful. I have noticed that doing the YNY warm-up exercises daily makes a big difference. When I do them regularly, I feel relaxed and can move without stiffness and pain. I get the feeling I’ve said this to myself before. Time to start listening to myself.

I worked full-time for the last two weeks and was appreciative of the meal portions in my freezer, both for lunch and dinner. Keep it going and freeze more meals. Note to self: eat more fresh veggies and remember to be aware of portion control.

Fewer hours of daylight continue to challenge me. It’s dark by 6pm, and I run out of steam, ready to go to sleep. I’ve come up with an idea to focus my attention and work on some of the hobbies I enjoy. I’m going to write the hobbies on pieces of paper and place them in a jar. Each evening I will pick one or two and work on those hobbies. It’s been a while since I’ve focused on studying Italian, German, or done any drawing and painting.

The job search continues. Much more efficient with online searching that’s for sure. This helps keep me from getting wound up about the whole process. Definitely, a good thing since this is a topic that can get under my skin.

Been a good few weeks, spend time with family and friends. A little more winter prep in the yard since snow keeps taunting us. Have significantly reduced the amount of time I’m spending online. My iPad informed me yesterday that screen time is down 57% from last week. Interesting to know that it’s tracking my screen time. 😳 Freaks me out a little that it’s suddenly monitoring something that I’ve been talking about doing. Hmmm…I’ll chalk it up to coincidence and leave it at that.

Another week has flown by so quickly. I had to sit down and review what I did over the last seven days. Not sure if it’s the cooler weather or shorter days that make me want to hibernate. As soon as the sun goes down, I am ready to call it a day and go to sleep. This doesn’t help my energy level and make me want to exercise.

I did the YNY warm-ups 3 times this week. That’s pretty good. I did weights once and went for a couple long walks. All in all not bad, still room for improvement.

The warm-up exercises have really helped with my tailbone discomfort. This alone is incentive continue performing this routine regularly.

Realization, that’s the name of the game this week. I’ve realized a few things about myself that I can’t deny.

I’m not much for going to the gym. Not sure why this is, yet it is my reality. I seem to prefer to exercise at home. Now to work with this reality. I have some equipment at home, time to make sure I have an exercise plan I can follow at home and check in at the physio clinic for progress and additional exercises.

The shorter days of winter are a struggle for me. It’s common for me to want to go to sleep at 6 pm. I promised myself at the end of last winter that I would do something different this winter to energize me in the evenings. Any suggestions?

This week kept me busy and feeling productive. Didn’t think much about stress levels. I guess that’s a good thing.

My meal prep plan for the week was a success. Two slow cooker meals, rice, a soup, and pumpkin waffles are all packed in single servings and in the freezer. Easy to put together lunches and make dinners after work too. Bonus, fewer dishes to wash! This is important in my world of no dishwasher in the kitchen.

With cooler temperatures and snow falling, I finalized preparing the yard for winter. For the first time ever I mowed the lawn while snow was falling. Snow in September is too soon!!!

I was on a mission to deep clean my house this weekend. Something I have not done in a long time. It wasn’t a good idea to spend two full days cleaning, flared up my carpal tunnel in a bad way. Both hands and arms are swollen, weak, and numb. Lesson learned. Hopefully, the warm-up exercises will help my arms feel better soon.

Creating a habit of exercising has not been quite what I had envisioned. I will continue to work on it, starting small and building on what works for my life.

I have taken more medicine that I would have ever imagined. It started with a week of antibiotics in tablet form along with a bottle of something that would help my bronchial tract and some other tablets. I gave it a few days to see if the medicine just needed a little more time.

Nope, I returned to the doctor. This time a requisition for a radiografia and after viewing the results, I was told you must respect the riposo and to rest another 10 days. Along with more prescriptions for another bottle of a different medicine for the bronchial tract and something else I can’t even remember. These were accompanied by 14 injections of antibiotics administered by the best nurse in the world, a charming young man that came to my apartment daily. A brilliant service considering that when I looked in my bag of goodies from the pharmacy I cringed at the needles and wondered how on earth I was going to manage this on my own. It was a good way to practice speaking Italian and we shared laughs as he would practice speaking English with me and say ‘Stop!’ when I would cough pathetically, as I continued to cough he would then flip back to Italian and say ‘Basta!’ accompanied by the usual body and hand gestures Italians use to emphasis the message.

At the end of these two weeks my lungs continue to feel like they have taken on a life of their own. I can’t say I have ever been more aware of my lungs. Previously I was only aware of the feeling of breathing, shallow and deep, that’s it. Having taken breathing for granted as most do. Through this experience I have felt my lungs almost bring me to my knees in gripping pain and change to a feeling of tingling and crawling combined with an odd combination of pressure and pain.

Which takes me to once again visit the doctor, who is puzzled as to why after all the medicine I have taken this illness continues to plague me and asks, ‘what have you been exposed to that you are this sick?’ I had no clear answer to this question but it sure led to some humorous reflection of my life since the beginning of the year. The requisition form is printed for another radiografia. When at the clinic for this xray the technician recognized me and said ‘polmonite, how are you feeling?’. I guess as a foreigner who is not feeling well I stand out.

The reading of this radiografia lead to an urgent requisition to see a pulmonary specialist. Impressive that I was able to see him within 2 days. This time I am told bronchial pneumonia, likely caused by a virus. He too emphasized the importance of the riposo. Once again new medicine of which I have 8 boxes lined up on the counter and an interesting machine to inhale medicine to ‘clean’ my lungs. Best of all he recommends covering my nose and mouth when I go outside. Lovely, I can just picture myself walking around with a surgical mask on.

Riposo, riposo, riposo!!! Now I understand why it is important to respect the riposo.

There is something to be said for the frigid cold of Canadian winters…it is too damn cold for germs to survive! That’s a damn good thing! 🙂